Name: Caroline Davis Portals Quartet with the Glass Bead Orchestra
Start: 2026-05-16T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-05-16T21:00:00-07:00
Location: Hamilton Studio

Caroline Davis Portals Quartet with the Glass Bead Orchestra

Imagine Jazz

Caroline Davis, Julian Shore, Chris Tordini, and Tim Angulo followed by a short set with the Glass Bead Orchestra

Hamilton Studio

Caroline Davis is a Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer, and activist, whose work is driven by a desire for connection and a belief in music’s capacity to expand listeners’ ears, minds, and hearts. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition, she is the recipient of the DownBeat ‘Critics Poll’ Alto Saxophone ‘Rising Star’ award, as well as fellowships from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her residencies include MacDowell, The Jazz Gallery, Civitella, and the Rockefeller Estate; and she has served as a mentor for New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy program. Davis’ work spans a wide range of creative contexts, rooted in improvisation and social inquiry. She has released eight albums as a leader and collaborated with artists such as Allison Miller, Lee Konitz, John Zorn, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Miles Okazaki, Nicole Mitchell, Rajna Swaminathan, and Matt Mitchell. Her most recent release, Portals, explores themes of grief and memory, and she is also a contributor to Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards, a landmark collection of jazz compositions by female-identifying composers. In addition to her work as a performer and composer, Davis is a dedicated educator, teaching courses on gender in jazz at The New School and maintaining a private studio at the Manhattan School of Music. Her artistic practice is deeply intertwined with advocacy, including work for gender equity through This Is A Movement, and for current and formerly incarcerated individuals through initiatives such as Justice for Keith LaMar, Freer Records, Keys Beats Bars, and Creative Beyond Incarceration. Rachel Bade-McMurphy's Glass Bead Orchestra will perform a short set as the Master of the Game Album release celebration. More.................Alive with nurturing visions of simple sonic offerings to morph our present situation, Caroline Davis’ main reason for playing music is to connect with others, beckoning new vistas among curious listeners. Her musical journey began in Singapore, in a humid climate, hearing sounds underwater that she would recreate by singing to her German shepherd dogs, who treated her as their own. Her family moved to the United States, Atlanta, Georgia, around age 6, where she encountered R&amp;B and gospel music rife with horns that called her to choose the saxophone 6 years later. Today, Caroline’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to this shifting environment. As a leader, she has released nine albums: Live Work &amp; Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), Portals, Vol. 1: Mourning (2021), Alula: Captivity (2023), Portals, Vol.2: Returning (2024), and Fallows (2026). Her active projects include jazz-leaning Portals, experimental R&amp;B My Tree, and protest band Alula. She has won Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll Rising Star Alto-Saxophonist (2018) and has been included in numerous Reader and Critics Polls. Her work has garnered much praise from NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Wire, DownBeat, and many international publications.Davis is active as both a side-person and a leader in a diverse set of expressions. Davis has shared the stage with Lee Konitz, Rajna Swaminathan, Allison Miller, Michelle Boulé, Angelica Sanchez, Nicole Mitchell, John Zorn, Bari Kim, Wendy Eisenberg, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, and Billy Kaye.Caroline’s awards and recognitions are plentiful. She has been involved with various mentorship communities: IAJE’s Sisters in Jazz (2006), the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program (2011), and Jen Shyu/Sara Serpa’s Mutual Mentorship Program (2020). Davis was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2025), CMA's Performance Plus Grant (2021), NYFA's City Artist Corps Grant (2021), Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019-20); and she was a fellow-in-residence at Civitella (2025), Ucross (2025), The Jazz Gallery (2022) and composer-in-residence at MacDowell (2019), Avaloch Farm Music Institute (2023-24, 26), BringAbout (2024-25) and Civitella (2025). Some of her compositional practice integrates music with cognitive science influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition. As a teaching artist, Caroline brings her unique knowledge of music and psychology to her teaching. She offers a yearly Jazz &amp; Gender course at The New School, co-taught with Sarah Elizabeth Charles, and private lessons at Manhattan School of Music, and has been invited to institutions of all levels as a guest educator.Caroline is an advocate for social justice in the realms of gender (This Is a Movement) and in the movement for carceral justice (Musicambia, Freer Records, Justice for Keith Lamar). She is organizing community events as “Creative Beyond Incarceration”, showcasing the intersectionality between liberation and art of all forms.

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Caroline Davis Portals Quartet with the Glass Bead Orchestra

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Caroline Davis Portals Quartet with the Glass Bead Orchestra

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